


Mirror Image

by Telasero



Series: Saving Face [3]
Category: Elder Scrolls
Genre: Body Dysphoria, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Magic, Self-Discovery, Surgery, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-04
Updated: 2019-09-04
Packaged: 2020-10-09 22:53:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20517770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Telasero/pseuds/Telasero
Summary: A flashback. In another life, this could have been even harder.





	Mirror Image

**Author's Note:**

> -insert hilarious Mulan joke here-
> 
> FtM author seeks wish fulfillment fantasy through fictional characters. I would move heaven and earth to give myself a goddamn beard, you know.

In the fashion of over-the-top villains in her old Bretic children's books, the mirror might shatter if Andilane looks into it any longer. 

Her room is locked for the night, but she's snuck some of her father's old clothes. They barely fit, an adolescent she is but she is already Vanil's height, though not his shape, and it vexes her. She sucks in her cheeks, juts out her chin, pushes her shoulders back to the point where she cannot breathe and somehow it's not enough to fill gaps in her image, never mind take away from where they overfill -- the waist on his robes is too narrow and it won't close right, her undershirt exposed at the chest.

Andilane tears it from her body and dives into bed in her shirt.

When she's older and calls on those two handsome mercenaries to save her from an eternity spent locked away in her parents' home, and their journey ends in Vivec, she trades off all but the dull robe she'd worn out and packs away men's clothing. It satisfies her in a way she can't place, but she's known women to take wives as she nearly did and adopt a masculine outlook. Priests of Vivec becoming and being both male and female, or one after the other, or neither, but that was never for her as touched as she was. They serve as inspiration anyway when Andilane learns to cast an illusion to appear male, and the reflection in the water is finally appealing to her. She learns to hold the spell for longer, and to affect her voice, alter her gait and eventually she is called out in the street of Ebonheart by some Imperial, "Excuse me, sir!" and he doesn't quickly backtrack when Andilane opens his mouth.

Andilane is a strange name for a male, though, and sooner or later somebody  _ will _ ask for one. In his bunk at the Mages Guild, he signs many different names, in his right hand then his left, which flowed better before his surname? He's now Savilend's boy, Vanil's firstborn, but he's denounced them long ago. Had his life taken a different turn from the start he might have been Hekane's husband.

He pens her under Andilane, with an airing of his grievances and a list of names he's tested and despised. He puts the onus on his oddly enthused peers to call him name after name until he's satisfied and in the meanwhile he works on his craft.

The permanent alteration of the body, hair and flesh and bone shaped to his will, calls him even in his nameless state. By the time Hekane writes back from Sadrith Mora, he can't count the whiskers growing off his chin and at the corners of his upper lip.

She was always a little slow to contact.

There is no dispute that the new girl was no woman and had effectively made his point. The sheer euphoria takes hold with piercing claws but he needs to go further, he needs more -- he needs  _ less. _ A night comes when the guild healer is awakened because one of the recruits is actively dying of sepsis, an infected wound guarded with admittedly weak tooth and nail, and she comes upon the infamous alteration prodigy white as a sheet in his bed. When she undoes the meticulous binding of his chest she finds it disfigured, scarred and inflamed on the right side, and most of all, flat. Even with her most intensive treatment it takes him weeks to recover, and he is placed under watch to ensure he doesn't go and try to do surgery on himself again. But he is just that much happier, when he finally has the energy to feel emotion again.

Upon recovery, he binds what's left of his chest back up and goes out to town. A voice calls out and it's not his name but he turns his head anyway, acknowledges it, and realizes -- that's it. He'll share a name with some random Imperialized dunmer in Ebonheart, that's fine, he can give it to a proper one. He can give it to himself.

Nethyn Vari looks in the mirror.


End file.
